No Hard Feelings (15, 103 min.)
Verdict: Weak romantic comedy
Evaluation:
Walking out of the cinema at the end of No Hard Feelings, I wish I could say that the film’s title reflected my own feelings.
But actually, I had some hard feelings. It’s a romantic comedy so poorly constructed, so lazily written, so devoid of wit and charm that the ghost of Billy Wilder has to choke on his heavenly cigar.
Still, it’s not without promises. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, who always has a compelling presence on screen, though it turns out she’s not quite talented enough to turn water into wine.
In “No Hard Feelings,” Jennifer Lawrence (left) plays fun-loving, commitment-shy Maddie, who lives on a Long Island beach resort
She plays Maddie, a fun-loving, attachment-phobic who lives on a beach resort on Long Island, where the annual summer invasion of wealthy New Yorkers is bitterly resented by the locals, even as they make money.
Maddie is herself the abandoned child of a fat city cat who bought a beautiful house from her mother after an extramarital affair.
But Maddie’s mother died and now Maddie can’t pay the property taxes she has to pay to keep her beloved home.
To make ends meet, she has a job at a bar and drives an Uber. But it doesn’t make ends meet and the Uber job disappears when her car is impounded.
Then she sees, in a sort of fiction that only appears in bad movies, an online advertisement by a wealthy couple offering a handsome Buick to a playful young woman looking to usher in her hopelessly naïve, socially deficient 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman, who looks vaguely like a young Rowan Atkinson) in the world.
Percy, who doesn’t drink alcohol, can’t drive and has never dated a woman, is on his way to Princeton University and they want him to fit in. Above all, they don’t want him to arrive as a virgin.
But he must not know of her participation in his carefully crafted initiation rite.
Andrew Barth Feldman (left) plays the hopelessly naïve, socially deficient 19-year-old Percy
Percy’s father is played by Matthew Broderick, another likable actor but just as incapable of resurrecting a crass movie as Lawrence, who becomes crass by the second when 32-year-old Maddie has a ‘chance’ encounter with the brings in young Percy and persuades him to want him for his (weedy) body and (lack of) charisma.
Now there’s no reason sex comedies with age gaps can’t be wonderful. The Graduate (1967) is an enduring masterpiece. But there was great direction by Mike Nichols and a glorious screenplay by Buck Henry. This is strikingly not the case. It’s not that director and co-writer Gene Stupnitsky, one of the writing team on the US version of The Office, doesn’t get a laugh or two.
But a frontal nude scene starring the handsome Lawrence feels like it was born out of absolute desperation, as do some downright clunky slapstick moments. In true romcom tradition, Maddie’s purely mercenary relationship with Percy inevitably morphs into something far more real, but multiple storylines either don’t add up or fail altogether.
I now see that “No Hard Feelings” is being advertised extravagantly on the London bus side. Don’t run to catch it.
Asteroid City (12A, 105 mins)
Verdict: style over substance
Evaluation:
To paraphrase an old saying about London buses, we wait forever for a great movie to come out, only then two guys show up at once. However, not everyone thinks Wes Anderson’s new film “Asteroid City” is a lemon.
Wes Anderson’s new film Asteroid City satirizes the Eisenhower-era preoccupations with extraterrestrials and nuclear war against the backdrop of a tiny desert town
I first saw it at the Cannes Film Festival last month, where it was enthusiastically received by some but left others confused and bored.
After rewatching it this week, I’m still firmly in the latter camp. But it required a second look.
Of Anderson’s last three live-action films, I couldn’t have loved The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) more than I did, and I couldn’t have found The French Dispatch (2021) more tiring either. You just never know with Anderson.
More so than most other so-called authors, he invites you on a journey through his unique mind, but Asteroid City quickly made me want to step out.
Set in 1955, it’s an incorrigibly stylized satire on the twin concerns of the Eisenhower era: the earthly concern of nuclear war and the unearthly concern of alien invasion.
An extraordinary cast splits into two camps. Bryan Cranston plays an old-fashioned radio announcer who introduces a fictional drama called Asteroid City, set in a tiny desert town that was once hit by a meteorite. Edward Norton plays the series’ writer and Adrien Brody the director.
Set in 1955, the film stars Bryan Cranston (right) as a vintage radio announcer alongside a cast that includes Steve Carell (left).
Her scenes are in black and white, but the drama itself is vividly rendered in bright 1950s pastels and stars Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Steve Carell and Rupert Friend, starring Jason Schwartzman, a recently widowed photographer four small children.
Also making brief appearances are Margot Robbie and Jeff Goldblum, the latter as a lanky alien who steals the sacred meteorite himself.
The film is full of verbal and visual gags, some of which actually work. Some of these are very valuable and hats off to the child actors who are all great.
But the occasional treat isn’t enough compensation for being forced to wallow in Anderson’s undiminished smugness for nearly two hours.
Winning scratch card Turin (ilgranata.it)
A record victory in Turin (ilgranata.it)
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. WANA NEWS AGENCY (via Portal)
